Title: Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey
Author: Diana M. Raab
Publisher: Loving Healing Press
Publication Date: May 12, 2010
Paperback: 206 pages
ISBN: 978-1615990108
Genre: Non-Fiction, Cancer, Memoir
About the Book:
Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey is a compassionate and wry self-help memoir written by an award-winning prolific author, nurse and poet, who at the age of forty-seven found her life shattered first by a DCIS (early breast cancer) diagnosis and five years later by another, seemingly unrelated and incurable multiple myeloma. This book includes the author’s experiences, reflections, poetry and journal entries, in addition to writing prompts for readers to express their own personal story.
Raab’s journals have provided a safe haven and platform to validate and express her feelings. Raab views journaling to be like a daily vitamin – in that it heals, detoxifies and is essential for optimal health.
Readers will learn to:
Understand the importance of early cancer detection and how to take control of their health.
Discover the power of writing to release bottled-up emotions.
Learn how the process of journaling can facilitate healing.
See how a cancer diagnosis can be a riveting event which can renew and change a person in a unique way.
My Review:
Memoir, educational material, and a journal rolled into one, Healing With Words by Diana M. Raab is a deeply moving book to help others go through the process of living with cancer. Raab writes from personal experience as a cancer surviour and sadly again as a cancer patient. Raab’s book is filled with her personal accounts as well as advice about early detection, taking control of one’s health care, and writing prompts to get people writing about their feelings rather than keeping them bottled up. Healing With Words offers up not only a first hand account of battling cancer, it also offers relaxation advice, medical terminology, where to seek further advice and assistance, along with writing prompts to help the patient on the journey. Healing With Words is a work of love and pain, beautifully written through some of Raab’s darkest hours she wants to share the power of writing with others and in so doing help them to heal, if not physically, then emotionally. Healing With Words is an extremely emotional and moving book and one I would recommend to anyone who has cancer or knows someone diagnosed as well as those close to a cancer patient.
Diana M. Raab is an essayist, memoirist, poet and author blogger who teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and at various conferences around the country. She’s editor of the anthology, Writers and Their Notebooks (University of South Carolina Press, January 2010). Her memoir, Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal (Beaufort Books, 2007) won the 2008 National Indie Excellence Award for Memoir and the 2009 Mom’s Choice Award for Adult Nonfiction.
She has three poetry collections, My Muse Undresses Me (2007), Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You (2008), winner of The Reader Views Award and All books Review Editor’s Choice, and The Guilt Gene (2009).
She’s the recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Book Award for best health and wellness book for Getting Pregnant and Staying Pregnant: Overcoming Infertility and High Risk Pregnancy which has been translated into French and Spanish. In 2009 the book was released in its 20th anniversary edition, under the title, Your High Risk Pregnancy: A Practical and Supportive Guide updated in collaboration with Dr. Errol Norwitz of Yale School of Medicine.
Her latest book is Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey.
banner barDiana M. Raab’s HEALING WITH WORDS VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR ‘10 officially begin on July 6 and will end on August 27 2010. Follow the tour at www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com during the months of July and August to find out more about this great book and talented author!
I received a complimentary copy of Healing With Words by Diana M. Raab from Pump Up Your Book Promotion as part of the tour. Receiving a copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.
Interesting review. I wasn’t crazy about her poetry, so opted out of this book, now I wonder if I made a mistake…
Thank you for taking the time to read and review my book. Lovely review. I know the book has already helped and inspired others to not only write their story, but view each negative event in their lives as a riveting moment to inspire them to the next level.
Namaste,
Diana
http://www.dianaraab.com